The virtual world brings us wonderful things, makes our lives much easier and everyday we get a little more into it, although we face it as insufficient. For example; today you can build a great page on Myspace with a fantastic art design, you can upload until 10 tracks of your work, have as many profiles as you want to and can even associate them to Twitter and Facebook. You can sell MP3 files through the Itunes and other websites, can build your own virtual store, besides having access to a vast role of webradios where your songs can be played, you can even have your own radio channel if you want. Investing on Internet marketing we can achieve much more and this is a fact already, although we are still a little afraid of accepting it.

This fear, blindness or not acceptance, I have no definition for it, makes us deal with two realities and because of it, we have to constantly cross them. The result? A more demanding market, harder, more competitive, reality is getting further from the concept of “touchable profit”, but we cannot live without it. A prove?

Take a look at the statistics of CD selling, it´s not the main profit source anymore. A CD nowadays is a status symbol, having yours, with your music and a nice cover is nothing but a symbolic work we need to achieve for ourselves and the others, who need a prove to believe in our value. Profit doesn´t come anymore the same way it used to and if you expect only financial profit you will probably get disappointed, specially if your investment was made in a real professional pattern.
           
Artists need to be adapted in both worlds. We must have the CD to show our work is valuable since whenever we say we´re musicians, one might immediately ask: “Have you got a CD released?” At the same time there isn´t how to survive without the virtual. A profile at Myspace or any other similar website, songs available on the net, a  Youtube channel, this is the minimum. And there is more...if you are too much against downloading you will be stressed by the obvious. There is no way to get out of it. It will happen.
           
And the cost? One might say it´s cheaper as today we can record everything in our own personal computer, there are several programs and pluggins which allow us to achieve in a few hours results that a couple of years ago would make an entire orchestra and several days of work necessary. We can do much more in less time but if we think proportionally inside the capacity of each time, we might assume that in fact development and advance generated so many other necessities that the cost is still equally high.
           
Today you spend on much more than executive production and designing to have a CD. Besides the cost with pictures, printing, recording, masterizing so on and so forth, you
need a webdesigner, if the chosen photographer isn´t good at photoshop you´ll have to hire someone to take care of the picture edition, there is the art cover, the logo and it has to be really well done. In case you cannot afford a press assessory service you will have to spend many hours of your week on the Internet to send notes to several contacts, answer emails and check the incoming messages of at least 3 profiles in networking websites.
           
The reason to have more options isn´t because communication developed fast. Actually communication developed too fast and you must see, search and get into as many options as you can even if you don´t want it.
           
Communication power is in the hands of image and marketing strategy and it´s not enough to be a good artist, you need entrepreneurship and if you are not good at it, you´ve got to hire a good manager. You must know how to produce and if you don´t, you need someone who does. The least necessary structure is broad and wide cause the artist isn´t dealing with the local anymore but with global.

I, as a musician and music maker of this first generation, still dream of having my own CD, beautiful and perfect, I imagine myself looking at it for hours in a row and still want to show it to everybody. But I know this feeling is result of a cultural imposition from a time that I see getting concluded.

How will it be in 10 years?